Despite crackdown from courts, patent suits still battered tech companies in 2015

A new report found that tech giants such as Samsung, AT&T, and Apple were hit with an increasing number of patent claims filed by companies that hold patents but don't make products.

|
Denis Balibouse/Reuters/File
A visitor looks at Apple patents displayed at the World Intellectual Property Organization headquarters in Geneva in March 2012. A new report finds that tech firms faced an increasing number of patent suits by companies that hold patents but don't make products, despite efforts by Congress and the courts to crack down on frivolous patent suits.

Tech companies faced a growing wave of patent suits in 2015 from so-called non-practicing entities, which hold patents but do not create products based on them.

Despite growing calls for patent reform in Congress and a series of court decisions striking down patent claims, non-practicing entities filed 3,604 suits last year, according to a report released Monday by RPX Corp., which advises companies on reducing their risk of patent suits.

That’s an increase of nearly 25 percent from last year, but a decrease from 2013, when such companies filed 3,733 suits, the report found. The sharp increase initially seems misleading, the company says, given a series of recent court cases that aimed to curb what critics argue are frivolous patent claims, particularly for software and hardware.

But a spike in filings in a single court — the Eastern District of Texas — during the summer and a rise in suits due to new court procedural rules “highlighted the adaptive nature” of non-practicing entities (NPEs) in responding to changes in patent enforcement, the report says.

NPEs are a broad group that includes both research universities and some inventors, but they have also faced criticism as “patent trolls” — companies that buy up patents expressly to file suits for monetary gain.

Fears of patent trolling and debates over what constitutes a high-quality patent have led to a series of actions by Congress, the US Patent and Trademark Office, and the Supreme Court to crack down on patent suits.

Congress’ efforts, including the 2011 America Invents Act — a landmark bill that created a new tribunal called the Patent Trial and Appeal Board — have proved controversial, pitting tech companies and retail businesses on one side and universities, pharmaceutical companies, and biotech firms on the other.

Universities, which view holding and licensing patents as a key part of their research mission, have particularly argued against provisions in bills currently before Congress, saying the proposals go too far by potentially categorizing them as patent trolls.

Courts have also stepped in to curb what critics say are often frivolous patent claims.

A 2014 Supreme Court case, Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International, struck down a patent for software that reduces risk in financial transactions, leading lower courts to also strike down several software-related patents.

In the court’s decision, which was unanimous, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the company’s claim rested on an abstract idea rather than a concrete innovation. “Merely requiring generic computer implementation,” he wrote, “fails to transform that abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention.”

RPX’s report also reveals that contrary to the perception of NPEs as mostly patent trolls, some inventors have also repeatedly filed claims, particularly for software and hardware.

A Florida inventor named Leigh M. Rothschild is the largest single NPE based on the number of defendants who have been added to patent lawsuits he filed, according to the the report.

Mr. Rothschild, who holds a patent on technology that allows smartphone users to share groups of photos wirelessly based on their locations, has repeatedly challenged tech giants such as Apple, Samsung, Sony, and LG in suits, seemingly to no avail.

In one 2014 case against Apple, the company argued the suit should be dismissed because Rothschild was not able to claim Apple had any knowledge of the patent before the suit was filed. It was later dismissed and moved to a Northern California court last year, court documents show.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Despite crackdown from courts, patent suits still battered tech companies in 2015
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2016/0106/Despite-crackdown-from-courts-patent-suits-still-battered-tech-companies-in-2015
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe